2024 Elementary Student Summit Recap

Kick-Off

On April 11, students and teachers from eight elementary schools filled the Gaiser Student Center at Clark College for our annual Student Summit for elementary students. We energetically introduced our team with Clark County and EarthGen while each student was welcomed in with sustainable goodies, like a reusable water bottle, colored pencils, and more.

To kick off the summit, green teams could choose two of three break-out sessions to learn more about community planning, watersheds, or worm bins and decomposers. This was a lively bunch with lots of great questions, laughs, and learning. These jam-packed educational sessions ran for the duration of the morning till we broke for an amazing lunch catered by Foodie.

The afternoon was surely a treat for all! Each of the green teams got the opportunity to go up on stage and present the projects they had been working on all year. Each team is doing tremendous work on making their schools more sustainable. The students shared successes in revamping gardens, starting classroom worm bins for food scraps, turning off lights that weren't being used, and much, much more. It was inspiring to see all the creative projects happening around our community. With such thoughtful and great questions from the audience, green teams were getting inspired with ideas for new projects they could start as well!  

Closing 

To close out the summit, students gathered around their tables with huge sheets of paper to start brainstorming ideas for new projects. They were also encouraged to reflect on what they learned about the connections between land, air, water, and community, which was the theme of the summit this year. We went around the room and everyone had the opportunity to share out what their team came up with and any insights they had.

Overall, this year's student summit was a huge success! Students were able to connect to something bigger than themselves. Across our whole community, green teams are doing amazing sustainability work in their schools. The Student Summits are always an energic and inspiring space where students can connect and be reinvigorated for the next year to come.